Both Alike in Dignity
by Rainbow Shoelace
Summary: Sibling rivalry can be a cruel thing, and if there's one thing Kirley McKormack knows about, it's living in his older sister's shadow. - Written for the Obscure Characters Ficathon on LJ. Contains Quidditch players, cross-dressing, angst, fluff and marmit


_Anything you can do I can do better_

_Anything you can do I can do too._

* * *

Some days you wake up and you know the world is going to change.

Something in the atmosphere adjusts itself, switches key, snaps, breaks and shatters into a million irreparable pieces on the floor. Things are not going to be the same again. You can't explain how you know this or why, or whether this change is for better, or for worse, but you inherently just _know _that it is going to happen.

You also know that there is nothing you can do to stop it.

As Kirley ate his toast and jam that late spring morning, somewhere in his childish brain he knew this to be true. It wasn't something that he was able to articulate to the rest of his family as they sat around eating their breakfast … even if he had been able to he wouldn't have felt it was a topic of conversation to be broached over orange juice and bowls of muesli. No. He decided it was best if he kept it to himself, whatever this strange feeling was, and just hope that it would go away before lunchtime.

But it didn't go away. The five-year-old frowned to himself as he stuffed a Marmite sandwich with the crusts cut off into his mouth with pudgy fingers. Anything that had troubled him for a full five hours must be very serious. Very serious indeed. He frowned again, attempting to wipe a splotch of the sandwich filling from his lips, but instead succeeded in smearing it across his left cheek. He had never felt anything like this before in all his life. He was dimly aware that he should be rather annoyed about it, and he kicked out at a nearby teddy bear to demonstrate his frustrations to the world at large.

His sister on the other hand, Meaghan, didn't seem to have noticed the change in the air at all. If anything, she was more herself than usual today. After lunch, despite his whinging protests, she dragged him out into the garden so that they could hunt for the gnomes that she was convinced were beginning to nest beneath the box hedge at the end of the lawn. She had never seen a baby gnome before, and she was determined to before her seventh birthday. That was less than two weeks away.

"Don't fidget," she scolded as he crouched down low beside the bushes. "You'll scare 'em away if you move too much."

"'S just gnomes, Meaghan," he had grumbled as he had squinted into the undergrowth, wondering if that flicker of movement he had just seen was one of their very own tribe of what he felt were walking potatoes. "Not much special 'bout gnomes."

"More special than you," she shot back, sticking her tongue out at her younger brother, who pulled a disgusting face back at her. "You're a little brother, what good are you?"

"More good 'an stupid gnomes." Kirley folded his arms and pouted. "More good 'an stupid sisters, too."

Meaghan snorted, sat back on her heels and roughly pulled her dress back down over her muddied and scabbed knees. She looked at him with her large, brown eyes and grinned. "I'll always be more good than you, Kirley," she said.

It was a flat statement. Judging by her tone of voice, she could have just as easily been saying that the grass is green, or that the earth was round, that birds sang, trees grew leaves, bees could sting you, fire would burn you, your blood was red. Big sisters were better than little brothers.

Kirley got up and stared at her. "'Snot true, Meaghan," he squawked, "_liar!_"

"'M not lying. 'S true!" she insisted, drawing herself up onto her feet. She was a good few inches taller than her brother and used this to her full advantage as she towered above him. "I'm _better than you._"

"Nuh uh!" Kirley shook his head and screwed his face up. He would not hear this.

"Promise you 's true." Meaghan folded her arms and looked him squarely in the face, narrowing her eyes. She raised her chin stubbornly and clenched her fists against her arms.

"Nuh _uh!_" he screamed. Kirley's face flushed beetroot as his chin wobbled, tears beginning to leak down his babyish cheeks. His sister was so mean, so _mean_.

"'_Tis!_" she yelled back, throwing patience and big-sisterly restraint to the wind and shoving Kirley in the stomach, hard.

Kirley lost his balance. Surprised, he stopped blubbering and stared up at his sister as he started to topple backwards towards the ground. Instinctively he grasped at her t-shirt. He clutched at the fabric. She wasn't expecting that and was pulled down with him. Meaghan squeaked as she landed on top of him with a thump. Thrusting the heels of her palms into the damp earth, she pinned him beneath her, screwed her eyes up and roared into his ears.

"I AM BETTER THAN YOU, KIRLEY MCORMACK, AN' I ALWAYS WILL BE SO THERE."

Kirley was too shocked to cry. The blood drained from his face. All he could think of asking was just, well, "why?"

That threw her. She stopped seething and looked up across the garden, thinking for a moment. The sun threw the surroundings into sharpness. Where the rain had fallen last night there were now gleaming sheets of light. The wooden swings by the potting shed shone like oiled steel. The grass had become needles and the sky overhead had stretched itself higher than usual this afternoon. Meaghan turned back to her brother and grinned wickedly.

"Because," she started, poking him in the ribs to make sure he was listening, "I am going to be the bes' Quidditch player. Ever. Jus' like mum," she added.

Kirley looked at her nonchalantly. "No you're not," he mumbled. "Can' beat mum, mum's the bes'."

"Maybe, but bes' or second bes' I'll always be better 'an you, won't I?" That wasn't a question. Meaghan stuck her tongue out.

Kirley couldn't think of anything to say back. At the same time, he suddenly became aware of the rainwater seeping through the back of his jumper. He was very uncomfortable. "Gerroff me," he snarled, wriggling against his sister's weight.

"Make me," she hissed.

In the end, Kirley was forced to scream for his mum. Meaghan was reprimanded for tormenting her younger sibling, before being given a Quaffle to toss about the garden whilst Catriona calmed Kirley down.

Kirley had pretty much forgotten all about the unusual feeling he had had earlier, but it seemed to have disappeared now anyway. As his mother dried his eyes, he tried to forget what his sister had said to him. She was not better than him and he would prove it. Somehow.

* * *

There was the sound of laughter and the crunch of shoes on gravel. The front door clicked shut. Kirley did not look up, but continued to hum along to the music crackling from the old record player he had managed to find in the shed. 

"Well, hello to you too," Meaghan huffed. She had been out in the fields outside the cottage, playing Shuntbumps with the McDougal brothers all day. She toyed with her ponytail as she waited for her brother to acknowledge her. "Well?"

Kirley grunted. At twelve years old he felt he had better things to do with his time than listen to his sister. He tuned her out and continued slapping the music out against the wooden box he was sitting on. _Small jean genie snuck off to the city, _he sung in his head as the record skipped and stuttered._ Strung out on lasers and slash back blazers and ate all your razors while pulling the waiters … _sheer magic. In Kirley's opinion, anyway. Muggles might not have a clue about most things, but what they lacked in most areas they made up for in abundance with their music. However, not everyone agreed with him.

"What _are_ you listening to this time?" his sister scoffed as she flopped down next to him on the box. She picked up the record sleeve and spun it casually between her hands before looking at the title suspiciously. "Who's this bloke then? Not another bloody Muggle fruit, is he?"

"It's David Bowie," said Kirley, "very popular musician with the non-magic kids on the mainland."

"Sounds like a poof to me," yawned Meaghan, tossing _"Aladdin Sane"_ back onto the floor. "I mean, look at that makeup. 'S got 'poof' written all over his face."

"Those are lightning bolts, Meaghan. Anyway, I think it's great," Kirley mumbled, lifting the discarded sleeve off of the floor. He had bought it along with a stack of others from the town a few weeks ago. T-Rex, Slade, Mud, this Bowie guy and some band called Wizzard among others. Wizards didn't have anything like this. The Hobgoblins couldn't hold so much as a match to the likes of Marc Bolan as far as he was concerned. It was a shame. One day people would wake up and they would realise what they were missing, he thought. One day …

"You would," Meaghan snapped, digging her elbow into his side. She had grown into a tenacious, argumentative teenager, with a strong physique that echoed her love of broom sports. She didn't much care for music.

Then again, Kirley didn't much care for Quidditch, which had earned him his mother's concern and his sister's poorly concealed contempt. Meaghan was every bit as Quidditch obsessed as her mother ever was, and still was. But then that wasn't surprising; everything about Meaghan was the spitting image of Catriona. From the tip of her slightly snubbed nose, to the way they both hated spinach. His father, Hamish, didn't seem to have had any input into her making at all.

Everyone always said that Kirley looked like his grandmother had when she was younger. Feline and long and thin. He was too feminine for a boy, but without the beauty of a little girl. A sexless youth, with dark eyes and curly dark hair that badly needed a cut. His eyes flickered to his sister.

"Yes," He muttered, "that's right. I would."

"Always were a first-class berk," she sniffed, getting to her feet and stepping over the dented old gramophone. "Always will be, too."

She disappeared into the hallway and into the kitchen beyond. Kirley just shrugged and turned the volume up, thudding the balls of his feet against the bare floorboards as the guitar riffs floated through and up the little house. Kirley liked to think that they were shaking the very foundations of the cottage as he strummed out each new chord on the thin, dust-mote filled air to an invisible audience of thousands, with each and every one of them screaming his name as he sparkled in the spotlight of his mind's eye.

* * *

That Christmas, to celebrate her new position as Hufflepuff Keeper, Meaghan received a brand new Nimbus 1005, complete with broom servicing kit. Kirley didn't think much of it. 

"The twigs are too brittle," he said when his parents withdrew to give their own presents to each other.

"What would you know about brooms, you little squirt?" Meaghan chuckled, running a hand over the smooth polished wood. The same model broom as her mother rode. Wonderful.

"I know enough to know that the bristles shouldn't do this," he muttered and took a handful of the broom's brush, twisting it savagely so that the twigs splintered and fell to the floor.

"That's for tripping me up on the train at the end of term. Happy Christmas," he whispered in her ear as he belted up to his room.

By New Year's Eve, Meaghan had managed to snap all the strings on Kirley's new acoustic guitar in retribution.

The following week she left a note by his bedside:

_'Now we're even – M xxx'_

Kirley had scoffed when he read the slip of paper, screwing it up and tossing it at the waste paper basket beneath his desk and missing. He watched it bounce off the rim and settle on the rug. _Fine,_ he thought to himself. _Be that way._

_

* * *

_

In the dark, most people find it easier to pretend that they are who they want to be.

Kirley didn't need the dark. He dreamt of bigger and better things at all times of the day. That was the problem. His marks were suffering at school because of it. He would hand in Potions essays with doodles of star-spangled celebrities wearing spandex, all sprawled down the margins of his scrolls. During Transfiguration he managed to change the frog he was meant to be turning into a crown into a platform-heeled boot instead, complete with sequins and rainbow laces. Even in Divination he was accused of being vague; he swallowed his tealeaves instead of reading them, much to the despair of his teacher.

The only place he didn't seem to be having any problems was Astronomy. But then all he seemed to see anymore was stars.

Yes, he might not need the dark, but sometimes it helped. For now the curtains were drawn and the door was shut. A single nightlight guttered on a saucer placed on his sister's dressing table, throwing light over the dusty mirror that he now looked into.

Still sexless. A late developer with a phlegmatic face. Even at fifteen he was still strikingly effeminate … not 'girly' per se, but lithe and spindly, almost delicate. Like the bones in a bird's wing. The kind of genderless figure that is unsettling in its ambiguity.

Kirley was beginning to love this androgyny (despite the name-calling and bloody noses and the black eyes at school), especially at times like this, when his sister was away at a friend's house.

For someone who dreamt of fame, of having his name on every girl's (and every boy's) lips, Kirley had an unusual appetite for disappearing. Some evenings he would lie back on his bed and pretend he was part of the patchwork quilt, melting into the coloured squares of cloth until you couldn't tell where his body stopped and the fabric beneath him began. Other evenings, like tonight, he liked to imagine he was someone else.

He half-closed his eyelids to admire the glitter he had applied to them. Meaghan never used the makeup well-meaning aunts would send her for Christmas and birthday, so she would never know that he had been experimenting. Looking through his eyelashes, the glitter turned into constellations. He shook his hair down over his face and again looked at himself with those half-eyes. The silvery specks twinkled through the dark corkscrews. How did that song go again? _You've got the universe reclining in your hair._ That was it. Cassiopeia and Capricorn and all of the Seven Sisters, and they were all his this evening, tangled in the lengths of his straggling mop.

Kirley flicked the unruly mass out of his face and let his fingers traipse across the tabletop, hovering over the various bottles and canisters that he had at his disposal. What should he put on next? He picked up an eye pencil, rolled it between his finger and thumb. Yes, this would do nicely.

He swept the eye liner around each rim, careful not to stab the whites of his eyes. He blinked twice, the colour stinging his tear-ducts a little, although it was nothing to worry about. He glanced at the mirror again, noting the changes this slow metamorphosis brought out in his face. Butterfly boy. He always liked it best when he was in transition. Half himself and half Other.

In the fluttering candlelight he could almost make himself believe it was real, that it wouldn't go away when he washed his face in an hour or so's time. He lifted the scent bottle to his throat. It was strange, he thought, that he craved so much notoriety when he revelled in such furtive and secretive acts.

Something was missing. He squinted at the picture he was painting in the dim light. It definitely wasn't quite right yet … lipstick. He needed lipstick. Everything looks better with lipstick, including the newspaper clippings of the bands he idolised. Even they looked better for a little colour daubed messily onto their flat, monotone, smudged ink, 60 recycled paper lips.

He chose something deep and wine coloured. He twisted the shaft carefully, inhaling the faint odour of coconuts and pigment as he did. The stick shimmered thickly in the half-dark. Like an oil slick, he thought; just as deadly. Kirley fancied that he could see rainbows in its dark, clotted surface.

He swirled it greedily over his gently parted lips, savouring it like a small child might savour a chocolate bar stolen from the treat box kept on the highest shelf in the kitchen. It practically oozed over his mouth as he puckered and spread the slightly sticky stuff evenly, from the centre to the corners of his mouth. It glistened like a fresh wound, he noted, smiling mentally as he turned his head this way and that, admiring his handiwork.

Leaning forward, he closed his eyes and exhaled onto the bleary glass, his breath forming a cloud on the surface, hiding his face from view. Like a scab, perhaps, or a chrysalis, or an eyelid closing on a large, vacant eye that did nothing but observe the world through its own grey impassiveness.

As the mist faded, his face twisted back into focus, almost sharper than it was before thanks to its brief absence. Glitter and shades of blood and sheer naughtiness. It was wickedly beautiful. Perfect and poisonous all at the same time.

And, like all beauteous things, it couldn't last for long.

The door squeaked ajar. There was a shocked gasp from the landing. Kirley span around on the stool to see who it was ... Meaghan.

_Shit_.

She said nothing. She just stared at her brother, plastered in the eye shadow and the foundation and the lipstick – the _lipstick!_ – that Auntie Agnes had given her two Christmases ago and that she had never used and would never dream of using now.

"Meaghan," Kirley started. Oh God, what was she doing back home this early? "Meaghan I -"

"Save it, Kirley." She raised a hand to stop him, still staring, enthralled - or was it appalled? – by the sight in front of her. Her eyes widened when she noticed he was wearing a pair of her high heels, too. She blinked when she realised that he was also in the fishnet stockings that she had hidden in the back of her underwear drawer so that her parents wouldn't find them. "I don't want to know."

"_Meaghan!_ No, wait, it's not what you think, it's –"

"Shut up, Kirley," she ran a hand down her face, shook her head and smiled.

Then she giggled. Then downright laughed at him. A cruel and bark-like noise that made his heart hurt and his ears ring with humiliation. He lowered his eyes.

Finally, after what seemed like hours (though was probably no longer than a minute), she left, announcing that she was going to have a bath. She grabbed her towel and slammed the door behind her.

The draught from the door snuffed the candle out, leaving Kirley in the pitch black. He groaned and let his head collapse against his folded arms on the table top, numb and feeling wholly unpleasant. He realised he still had the lipstick in his hand. He wrinkled his nose and lifted the offending article up to his face. Coconuts and glitter and blood and wicked, unforgiving beauty …

He cried out angrily, drew back his arm and chucked the vile thing at the mirror. He wanted to smash something, break it, hurt it and humiliate so that it too knew what it felt like to hate. Instead, it glanced off, bouncing harmlessly away with an unsatisfying plastic clatter.

In the end, it left nothing but a burgundy smudge on the darkened pane. All Kirley could do was stare at the blemish, as the black eyeliner bled from his eyes and stained his cheeks in ashen, watery runnels, leaching the powder from his tissue paper skin.

* * *

"Hurry up, Kirley; we'll miss the start if you don't get a move on!" 

Catriona turned back around and continued to hurry on up the twisting, rickety wooden steps to the top of the stand. Kirley scowled at the back of her head and shoved a hand deep into his pocket, whilst the other incessantly tapped against the handrail as he climbed. He had been dragged out of school for the day to some deserted, wind-and-rain-swept moor, and was not enjoying himself at all.

All of this because his sister was playing her first professional game of Quidditch. Brilliant. Sodding brilliant. So now he was going to freeze his arse off for the rest of the afternoon at least, and all because she had made his mother's ex-team.

Still, he supposed that she wasn't bad at this Keeper business. Whilst she had been on the House team, Hufflepuff had won the cup three times in a row. Of course Kirley, being a Slytherin, hadn't really appreciated this at the time. Still, since she had left, his side seemed to be doing much better.

They arrived at their box, reserved for former team members and their families. Kirley slumped himself on a bench and gathered his cloak about his body. Now that his hand was at rest, he began to tap out the same heavy rhythm he had beat out on the handrails as he had ascended on the floor of the box with his feet. It had been bugging him all day, he couldn't get it out of his head. Not even for his stupid sister's Quidditch match. His parents sat down on either side of him. There was a faint squeeze on his shoulder. He looked to his left and saw his mother smile fleetingly.

"This is going to be fun, isn't it?" Her smile spread as she turned to look out at the pitch, the crows feet at the corners of her eyes bunching faintly as she squinted at the player's entrance to the pitch. It wouldn't be long now. Her hand left his shoulder, letting the cool October air rush in and chill the patch of vaguely warm fabric she had left behind. Beside him, his father coughed and rubbed his forearms, trying to force some feeling back into the numbed flesh, no doubt. Kirley looked out into the field. The stands were still filling, but he supposed they would not be more than two thirds full by the time the game started. It was too miserable a day for most people, perhaps.

Suddenly, there was a cheer from the other side of the stadium, and the commentator stepped up to his podium. Kirley narrowed his eyes against the sharp wind that blew into his face. The players would be out in a moment. His sister would be among them.

Within another couple of minutes, seven emerald green streaks careered out of the tunnel, closely followed by seven purple ones. Presently, one of the seven broke off from the rest and came hurtling up to the stand where the McKormacks were sitting.

Meaghan screeched to a halt about twenty feet away, waving madly at her mother. Catriona stood up and skittered to the front of the box, beaming and returning the frantic waves, both to her daughter and, all of a sudden, the crowd at large, who still fondly remembered Catriona's own glory days with the team.

Kirley hunched his back against the wooden bench, offering his sister a paltry grimace as she looked at him and pointed to herself and to her robes, then to the cheering crowd both around and beneath her (there were definitely more people now; the stands seemed to be heaving) and then to the rest of her team mates. What did the stupid girl want now?

She mouthed something to him. He didn't catch it the first time so she lipped it to him once more. Kirley was pretty sure of what he had seen that time. "Better than _you,_" she had smiled over to him. Like some kid in the playground, teasing someone smaller than herself, daring them to challenge. Bitch.

His mother hadn't noticed. She was too busy glowing with the thrill of being with her people again. Her _crowd_.

_No, not her crowd any more_, Kirley thought to himself. Her daughter's crowd. It had been passed down to her. One could almost say it was a birth right. Sent down the maternal line instead of via the usual masculine route.

The commentator's voice boomed out across the crowds and Meaghan finally, reluctantly, assumed her position within the scoring area, where she prowled around the perimeters, waiting for play to begin.

And so it did begin, not that Kirley really noticed. He was studiously avoiding looking at the pitch with the kind of practiced skill that is only perfected by your late teens, if at all. He would not look at her after what she had just said. Well, nearly said. He continued to tap his foot, marvelling at how the rhythm of his steps would tie with the thrum of the crowd around him. It was like it had its own music. Not the bawdy songs that rifled through the air, but something more primal than that, like blood lust and smoke on the air.

A roar of excitement rippled around the stadium as Meaghan apparently demonstrated her awe inspiring and obviously-so-much-better-than-Kirley-ever-will-be-centric Keeping skills ("Oh, Hamish!" cried Kirley's mother, somewhere on his left hand side, "our daughter just managed a Starfish and Stick! A _Starfish and Stick,_ Hamish! Where's the camera?"). Kirley just sank lower onto his seat. His fingers were numb, he noted. How typical. He rummaged in his pockets in the hope that he might find something to keep himself warm. A pair of gloves would have been nice, or a hand warmer.

It turned out that he had no gloves. However, pushing the tips of his fingers into the bottom of his breast pocket, he discovered that he did own the stub of a pencil, and a tiny, battered notepad. Well, it wasn't as good as a pack of cards, but at least it was something to take his mind off of things. Perhaps the game would finish relatively soon.

He looked up. The first spots of sleet were beginning to sting his face, making his cold and damp hair snap viciously at his cheeks. Meaghan had just narrowly missed being beaten around the head by an unchecked Bludger. Kirley was almost sad that she hadn't been; that would have been entertaining, at least.

It really was bitterly cold. Looking down at the pencil and pad of paper in his hands, he wondered whether writing the lyrics he had promised Tremlett would keep his fingers warm. There was that beat in the back of his mind again, hard and slow and demanding … Kirley knew how it felt and how it wanted to be heard.

Perhaps he could help it on its way.

He flicked the nib of the pencil with his finger thoughtfully and placed it on the creased surface of the paper. What did this song ask to be about? Well, considering where he was, and who he was here for, and the sheer maliciousness of the rhythm that he could feel pulsing in the back his throat, there was only really one person that it could be about.

Kirley looked out once more to the pitch, and to his sister. He smirked once, then bowed his head and began to write.

* * *

Compared to the thrash of bodies in the crowd beyond, up here it was relatively still, he thought. He brushed his knuckles against the strings of his guitar and looked out into the throng in front of him, all hungry for what he was feeding them. His lip curled, he stuck a chord, ascended a scale or two and slammed back down into that harmony with the bassist, lute coming in from behind … WHAM. 

Stars burst overhead, and suddenly all around there was the clamour of tongues. All ripe and greedy for more.

Not that there were to be any encores tonight. The fireworks continued to sprawl themselves over the night sky. Kirley smiled wearily and hopped off stage, leaving his squalling fans behind in favour of his quiet changing room. When you have eight thousand witches and wizards all screaming your name in unison, you know you have made it.

Tonight it had been sixteen thousand.

He flicked his top hat onto a conveniently placed chair and closed the door behind him, glad for the relative dark of the small room that the site supervisors had left for him. He wiped a hand over his eyes, smudging the stage makeup a little. This was the final night of their European tour. The first time he had been back to Scotland in three years. It was also his birthday.

As he grew accustomed to the low lighting, his eyes skimmed across the stacks of cards that well-wishers had sent him. God, there were certainly more than last year, and these were just the ones the band's manager had sent through. Clumping his feet onto a nearby coffee table, Kirley settled back into a well worn armchair and picked a few cards out to read at random. With love from Edwina Pendleton. Best wishes from Samuel Oakes. Are you single? Love Tracy Neerditch. Have a great day, from someone who had opted to remain anonymous and merely signed the card with a lipstick kiss.

"How about a Happy Birthday, with love from your big sister?"

"Hello, Meaghan."

He looked up towards the door. He smiled. She smiled back, leaning on the door frame, not quite in the room, but not out of it either. Almost teetering on the precipice. Three years since he had last seen her, too.

"I, er, I got your letter," he mumbled. "Sorry I haven't written back yet it's been …"

"Mad, I know." She raised her hands to stop him. There was no need for apology. "I hear about you on the radio most days. Quite the little superstar."

"Er, yeah." Kirley coughed and sat forward in his chair, unfurling his legs beneath him. "I hear Portree's doing well this season."

"Oh, we have a comfortable lead right now." She took a step forward, still hovering around the door. She'd cut her hair, he noticed. It wasn't scraped back into the tight, masculine ponytail it always had been. It was softer now, and hung around her face. "Put it this way, We don't see the Cannons as a threat just yet."

He grinned and gestured for her to come and sit on the spare chair at his side. "Can't help but feel sorry for the poor buggers though, can you?"

Meaghan made a non-committal noise in the back of her throat. Kirley realised with some amusement that she still hadn't lost her competitive streak. He doubted she ever would.

"I can't stay for long, you know," Meaghan said quietly after a silence. "I really … well, I just stopped by to give you this." Her hand slipped into the pocket of her duffle coat, reappearing with a small parcel, wrapped in somewhat crumpled brown paper and tied with simple white string. "Sorry, the wrapping got a bit messed up when I was riding over. It's not much, but I thought you might like it. Couldn't come here without a present."

She handed the thing over. Kirley looked at it, bemused. Meaghan never bought him presents, so receiving one now, after twenty four years, was a bit of a surprise. "What is it?" he asked. A stupid question.

"Open it and find out, you daft sod," she chuckled, legs crossing, wrist against cheek, watching carefully.

He opened the small package slowly and carefully, as if he were unbuttoning it, taking care not to rip the paper. It was crisp between his fingers, he noted. Within the thin outer covering he found a small, shallow cardboard box. No frills, no gaudy decorations. Kirley shook it, intrigued.

Prising the lid off revealed a small, leather strapped watch with a sliver case and glass face. Fairly ordinary. Kirley frowned and brought the object closer to his face. He squinted at it. The hands were silver, the dial itself was charmed so that inky stars drifted across its surface. Meaghan informed him that during the day the sun would slowly roll across the disc instead.

"I told you it wasn't much." Meaghan said.

"Oh no. No. I think it's lovely," Said Kirley, putting the watch on the table in front of him and smiling.

Meaghan nodded and got up to leave. She asked him whether he would be home soon. He said that he'd think about it. She nodded. They both stood up, looking at each other for a couple of uneasy moments, a couple of feet between them, neither of them moving toward the other.

In the end she moved for the door. Kirley followed.

"You know," she said, "it was good to see you again. I miss you."

"Me too," Kirley smiled, leaning on the wall as she slipped through the doorway.

"You weren't so bad, really."

"Neither were you."

Meaghan bit her lip and nodded, lowering her head for a moment. She looked back up at her brother, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I could never do what you do," she said, a thin smile creeping over her face. "You're alright, you know."

"I know," Kirley said, covering her hand with his own and squeezing. Meaghan bobbed her head again, pausing for a moment and thinking.

"Turn the watch over, when I'm gone," she said in the end, one foot already out of the door again and her hand on the knob. "Bye, Kirley."

"G'bye, Meaghan," he replied. He made no move to stop her as she walked off down the corridor, just watched her leave. And as suddenly as she had arrived, she was gone.

It was ten minutes or so before Kirley went back to the watch. In the meantime he had helped himself to a cigarette and a cup of coffee, floo'd the other band members in each of their separate rooms so tell them that he would be ready to go soon, and once again slumped himself in the arm chair in the corner. He picked up the gift and toyed with it, weaving the straps between his fingers and then pulling them free.

After a moment or two he flipped the thing over, and he looked. There, etched into the mechanism's case was a single word. It was barely visible unless you angled the object so the light caught in the lettering, but it was there, in neat, simple copperplate script.

He brushed his fingers over the six letters and chuckled to himself. How could one word mean so much? Yet, since he had known her, not once had his sister ever admitted anything to wonderful to him in his life. He read the word again, relishing the way the words rounded and fell off of his tongue with such liquid ease. She would never say it out loud, of course, but then some things aren't meant to be uttered so casually.

"Equals," he whispered, his eyes falling shut.

_Equals._

One word, two syllables and a lifetime of struggling to prove himself.

That, to him, was everything.


End file.
